The Spanish government is calling for an investigation into Meta, X, and TikTok for the creation of child pornography using AI.

Barcelona / MadridPedro Sánchez is not backing down and is taking another step in the crusade against Big Tech. The Spanish government on Tuesday asked the Public Prosecutor's Office to investigate X, Meta (which includes Facebook and Instagram), and TikTok for the sexual violence crimes they may be committing in the creation and distribution of child pornography using their artificial intelligence (AI) tools. "These platforms are threatening the mental health, dignity, and rights of our sons and daughters. The State cannot allow this. The impunity of these giants must end," Sánchez himself stated early in the morning in a message published on X.

The Council of Ministers in Dubai, among whom the ban on social media for minors under 16 years oldIn a press conference following the cabinet meeting, spokesperson Elma Saiz justified the decision by stating that "every day" millions of "knot images," many of them of minors, created with AI, appear on social media. According to data released by the Spanish government, in fact, one in five young people in Spain, especially girls and teenagers, report having been exposed to the dissemination of fake knots created with AI when they were minors. "We cannot allow this to be amplified or condoned through the algorithm. The safety of our sons and daughters, the protection of their image, their privacy, and their freedom are at stake," Saiz said. What the government has done, therefore, is invoke Article 8 of the Statute of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which empowers the executive branch to promote investigations "in defense of the public interest." In this case, in defense of "the public interest, the safety, and dignity of Spanish children as a whole." The request has been made to the Attorney General, Teresa Peramato, who—after consulting with the board of prosecutors of the Supreme Court—will have the final say on the actions to be taken.

The Spanish government justifies the decision with a technical report analyzing the potential criminal liabilities of allowing practices such as the generation of child pornography through ultra-counterfeiting (deepfakesand the manipulation of real images to create others with explicit sexual content. According to the report, social networks "allow the mass dissemination" of this content with "a speed and opacity that make detection and prosecution extremely difficult" and favor the networks that "monetize" these practices. All of this, it adds, could constitute the crimes outlined in Articles 189 and 189 bis of the Penal Code, concerning child pornography, which carry penalties ranging from fines to prison sentences of up to nine years. "These crimes could have been committed by social media users as well as by the platforms themselves and their managers," the report states, adding to the list possible crimes against moral integrity, coercion, threats, harassment, or sextortion. The Spanish government emphasizes that Spain is following in the footsteps of countries like France, where the Public Prosecutor's Office is already investigating X for the generation of deepfakes of a sexual nature, or Italy, where the data protection authority has already warned of the potential criminal liability for these practices. It adds that the European Commission and countries such as the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya, and several US states have opened investigations into social media platforms in this regard.